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Mercedes F1 team's head of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin, has said that the team will have to resolve the porpoising issue on their car gradually. The British engineer confirmed that the team will bring some updates to the car at the next race in Miami.
Porpoising is the 'bouncing' up and down movement of a Formula 1 car due to sudden increase followed by sudden decrease of downforce. The porpoising on the Mercedes has been so severe that their driver George Russell has complained of back and chest pains.
Team principal Toto Wolff has said that unlike other teams, Mercedes cannot contain the problem with braking alone. Shovlin added that there will be no overnight solutions. Speaking in a team video released on Mercedes' YouTube channel, Shovlin said:
“We are moving forward; we are learning more about it and hopefully, soon, maybe as soon as Miami, we can start to bring some parts to the car that will hopefully give us an indication on whether we are moving in the right direction."
He added:
"We are not expecting to solve this overnight, but if we can get a clue that we are going in the right direction, that we really got to the bottom of what is going on, then we will be quite pleased that we are just moving on the right path.”
Explaining several solutions the team has tried, Shovlin said that playing around with the ride height of the car and compromising on performance could resolve it. He said:
“It’s obviously a bit of a cliche, but the reality is that we can’t run the car where we designed it to run. We’re having to run it at higher ride heights, and by running higher ride heights, it’s got less performance. Now, that might be true for almost every car on the grid; lots of people are suffering with this problem, and we know that lifting the car is a way of alleviating it.”
Mercedes are positive that they have seen encouraging signs of progress with W13
While Lewis Hamilton believes the W13 is not one of the worst cars he’s driven, Wolff deemed the car undriveable in Imola, apologising to the Briton for its performance.
Shovlin believes that behind the scenes, the engineers in Brackley are trying to 'find the key'. He explained that the Austrian referred to finding an aerodynamical solution to the existing concept. Talking about the work behind the scenes, the Mercedes head of trackside engineering said:
“A lot of the work that’s gone on in Brackley, has been to understand the phenomenon and whether we can control it, whether we can engineer it out of the car. When Toto talks about finding the key, what he’s really talking about is, is there an aerodynamic solution that we can apply to this solution that will make this problem go away?”
Despite their struggles to find a solution to the porpoising, the Mercedes engineer believes they have seen positive signs of progress. Elaborating their approach to resolving their car's performance issues, the Mercedes engineer said:
“Now, realistically, we think this will be something we approach in steps, rather than one big moment where the whole thing vanishes. But we’re seeing encouraging signs; we’re hoping to bring parts to the car soon, maybe even Miami, where we can hopefully see progress on this issue.”
At this stage, it's seemingly clear that resolving the bouncing effect is going to be key to unlocking the car's optimum performance.
